The book is a sequel to a much cited book written by the same authors eighteen years ago “The End of Sovereignty: the politics of a shrinking and fragmenting world" (Edward Elgar, UK, 1992). Controversial at the time, the arguments are now widely accepted. However, the world has changed a lot in 18 years, and so have the issues. This new book focuses not so much on the issue of sovereignty, but on the overarching question of governance in a rapidly changing world.
Whats new?
The analysis is path breaking in several ways:
· First it examines the trajectory of the development governance over the long sweep of human history. Much of what we see as new – for example the Kyoto Protocol and what was being negotiated at COP15 - is built on a long history of human inventions which both limit and enable the responses now in play.
· Second, it proposes and examines a dynamic through which governance develops, and extends over the long period, and which continues to shape the responses we now see being shaped.
· Third, it examines in detail, the extraordinarily complex edifices of governance that are developing reaching from the local to the global, through a series of telling studies of key sectors of human activity, in the context of a rapidly transforming social and physical environment.
· Fourth, it situates this in an evolutionary context – examining the way that the social capacities of humans have co-evolved with their biological endowments.
· Fifth, it takes human society to consist of many worlds, stressed and responding in different ways, but also increasingly interacting, in the face of the changes that humans are catalysing.
· Finally, it raises the question of what would be required in the characteristics of governance, if human societies are to successfully adapt to the changes that they are inadvertently creating.
How is the argument developed?
The argument, and supporting studies, are built around a simple concept – that over the sweep of human history, ever more potent flows generated and shaped by ever more complex and sophisticated human activity, have increasingly developed across the boundaries around which prior governance institutions and processes have been erected. In this context the authors consider the growth of flows of finance, atmospheric pollutants, information, pathogens, and security threats, the challenges they pose, and the transformations to governance at all levels under way.
Camilleri and Falk advance the thesis that in the challenges we face and in our responses, there is a consistent arrow of complexification. Prior concepts of boundaries – for example between government, market, and civil society – are less useful as the interconnections proliferate across them. Governance is extending as an organic formation, breaking through previous structures, and developing with an architecture, but without any single institutional architect.
In the face of this, one key characteristic of successful adaption will be the development of greatly enhanced capacity by human communities and institutions, at all levels (from the local to the global) to see and comprehend impacts, changes and initiatives elsewhere. For the authors such a society is “holoreflexive”, an idea which they develop in some detail.
Central to this book is the argument that this moment of human history is one of epochal transition. The last century was marked by exponential growth in many key indicators of human activity, rising in rapid and unsustainable trajectories. But rather than the needed steadying hand at the helm, a chaotic crowd seems to be tugging in opposite directions.
The authors argue that human culture has evolved through a series of major epochs separated by periods of upheaval. During these critical periods of transition prevailing worldviews, practices and institutions are called sharply into question. We are living through such a transition – a watershed as critical perhaps as any of the 6 or 7 most significant transitions of the last 100,000 years.
As already noted, the direction in human evolution has been towards greater social, economic and political complexity and greater reflexivity. The underlying trend in human governance is clear – from extended family and clan, to tribe, chiefdom, kingdom, city state, ancient imperial state, and eventually the Modern state.
The Modern period, as we have known it, is rapidly coming to and end. The capacity of Modern institutions (those that developed in 17th and 18th century Europe) to shape coherent and adaptive responses to contemporary challenges has been in steady decline.
The much greater mobility and speed made possible by technological and social innovation now carry high-level risks for both communities and individuals. Some of these risks may be foreseen, others not. Our age has been aptly described as the ‘age of uncertainty’, the ‘age of anxiety’, and even the ‘age of extremes’. Global recession, the threat of global warming and nuclear war, international terrorism, pandemics, famines and other catastrophic humanitarian emergencies graphically illustrate the pervasive reality and perception of insecurity.
These extraordinary challenges have not gone unanswered. There is in fact a long history of incremental steps in response to the dangers posed whether by atmospheric pollution or the spread of infectious diseases. Since World War II the pace of change in the way we organise ourselves has been nothing less than remarkable. The norms, laws and institutions that manage the way societies function and interact have changed dramatically.
A raft of new principles have been adopted by the international community to deal with war, human rights, poverty reduction, humanitarian disasters, the environment, trade and now even finance. Extraordinarily complex decisions are now taken with unprecedented speed and global reach. Witness the response to Haiti.
We live in a world where governance operates at numerous levels – local, national, regional and global – simultaneously and interactively. More than this, these levels of governance have no option but to incorporate both big and smaller players operating in the market and civil society.
Over the last fifty years we have seen the rising influence of scientists, intellectuals, professional networks, social and religious movements side by side with the unparalleled growth of international law and international organisations. Yet these innovations, still unfolding as we speak, may not necessarily be equal to the task – they may not succeed in handling the complexity, speed and sheer volume in the flow of goods and services, money, technology, arms, drugs, people, information, ideas and images.
Human governance is evolving at a phenomenal rate, but so are the challenges before us. Human governance is in a race against time. We have developed ever more sophisticated systems of knowledge and organisation and ever wider networks of ethical awareness.
More and more key decisions cut across the boundaries of states. Our world is simultaneously bordered and borderless. The democratic principles that underpinned the modern state now have to be applied in much larger and more complex arenas.
Increasingly powerful voices are calling for democratic global decision-making – easy to say but very hard to do. For, as Copenhagen has shown, it is not simply a case of allowing more states to have a say, important as that is – but of creating an environment in which different voices can be heard and listened to: the voices of the powerful and the weak, the North and the South, East and West.
Summing up
Our laws and institutions are struggling to find a formula which recognises the social reality which is global and planetary, yet comprised of diverse cultures, societies, religions and civilisations. Reconciling the one and the many is the supreme challenge confronting contemporary governance. Future human adaptation depends on it.
